Jak Manage RAW Footage Using Nodes w DaVinci Resolve

Recently, I’ve changed to doing all of my color management in nodes as opposed to setting things up in Resolve’s Project Settings. One of the big questions that has accompanied this change is, “How do I deal with multiple RAW formats within a single project?” In this article, I’m going to show you how I handle multiple RAW formats inside of a single project. Let’s dive in and take a look.

Answer the easy questions first

Right now, I have three clips in my timeline from three different cameras and they are all in a RAW format. I have a Blackmagic RAW clip, an ARRIRAW clip, and a RED RAW clip.

In this timeline, we have three RAW clips from three different cameras.

Let’s start setting up the color management by filling in the easy answers first. What is the easiest thing to solve in terms of setting up this color management? Well, we know that we are going to be outputting to Rec. 709 Gamma 2.2, so let’s start there.

To do this, first go over to the Timeline level of the node graph and drop in a preset. When I do this, I use a preset that I keep saved in an album. This preset is a Color Space Transform that takes the footage from DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate out to Rec. 709 Gamma 2.2. It has the stock settings that I always use for Luminance Mapping, Max Input, Max Output, and Gamut Mapping already set up. It also always has Forward OOTF turned on.

In the Timeline level, drop in a Color Space Transform and set your output to Rec. 709 Gamma 2.2.

Working backward

Next, we need to work backward to make sure that we are getting the footage from each of these different cameras mapped into the DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate working color space, as that is what our final output transform is expecting.

When we’re color managing RAW footage with nodes, there’s a bit more work involved. You might know that when you are color managing RAW formats using Project Settings, Resolve will take over and autom